Don't Pet Burning Dogs, Even If They're Not Burning

I don't know what inspired this image of a man bending down to pet an unidentifiable creature, but these are the sketches for it:

And this is the final product; acrylic paint and charcoal on a 12"x12" panel.

I really like the way this turned out. The canvas texture on the panel gave the charcoal almost a halftone appearance.